If you’re a food truck fiend like me, you visit a city with a list of the food trucks you want to find before you leave. As the food truck scene explodes across North America, it can be tricky to sort through your growing options and decide which are the best local food trucks, before you even attempt to hit your must-taste goals.

Although I usually go rogue, I decided to let Vancouver Foodie Tours show me some of Vancouver’s best food trucks on their Word’s Best Street Eats tour. Since I’m already familiar with Vancouver’s street food scene, it seemed like a good way to determine if a food truck tour can deliver a good sampling of city’s food trucks.

The World’s Best Street Eats tour runs for two hours on week days and weekends. Tickets are $49 a head and include the food; kids under 12 are $39. The tour visits five to six downtown Vancouver food trucks. The trucks rotate, depending on day, from their pool of participating trucks. Just to give you an idea, regulars include: Japadog, Soho Road Naan Kebab, Tacofino, Mom’s Grilled Cheese and Kaboom Box.

Vancouver’s street food scene is on fire right now. What better way to taste the new street food options than to attend Vancouver’s annual summer Food Cart Fest?

Food Cart Fest launches Sunday, June 23 and continues every Sunday through September 22. The wildly-popular event is as tasty as it sounds. 20 of Vancouver’s finest food trucks come together to dish up snacks and meals including deluxe grilled cheese, wood-fired pizza, fusion fish tacos, wild BC-sourced fish and chips, and Aussie hand pies. The trucks circle around communal tables. Add an ocean view, a community market, live music, DJs, more craft food vendors, and kids’ activities and Food Cart Fest is a full day’s worth of fun.

In 2012, about 5,000 foodies and summer fun seekers ventured out to Food Cart Fest at the Waldorf in East Van each weekend. This year, the organizers (Arrival Agency) and the city worked to find a more central location to entrap even more hungry Vancouverites. In 2013, Food Cart Fest takes place at at 215 West 1st Avenue. The festival is adjacent to the Cambie Street Bridge and Olympic Village; between West 1st Avenue and the seawall. If you’re taking public transport, Food Cart Fest is just a short walk from the Canada Line’s Olympic Village Station; the Aquabus’ Spyglass Place Dock; and bus routes along Broadway, Cambie, Main, and West 2nd Avenue.

The City of Vancouver has put a lot of thought into planning its street food program since the 2010 launch. As a result of careful permit regulation, food truck expansion has been slow compared to the burgeoning food truck scenes in Portland and Austin.

The food truck revolution began in 2008 with pioneers such as L.A.’s Kogi BBQ, the little Korean taco truck that could. As of spring 2013, the food truck movement has swept North America. In Vancouver, we’ve got 99 food truck vendors serving tasty fare on city streets.

I recently sat down with James Cunningham, magnetic funnyman and host of Food Network Canada’s popular Eat St. show, to talk about Vancouver food trucks. The host was in town to launch his new book Eat Street, featuring recipes from the “tastiest, messiest, and most irresistible” trucks.” Hundreds of North American food trucks submitted recipes. The best of the best made it into Penguin’s test kitchen. Only 125 made the final cut.

And another: Simon Fraser University launches Street Eat Thursdays today, September 6. Every Thursday, food carts will venture up to the Burnaby campus and set up in the courtyard between Saywell Hall and the Academic Quadrangle from 11am-2pm.

Today, Japadog, Vancouver’s most famous food cart, will visit SFU’s Burnaby campus. So if the student one seat over is giving off an alluring aroma of terimayo in your afternoon lecture, you know why.

The Vancouver food tour scene (by tour I mean adventure) is a great way to change up the culinary experience by catching your own dinner, foraging, cycling or learning about the city’s history as you nosh.

Thomson, who’s been called “the sensei of speed eating” and “top dog,” downed seven Japadogs in 10 minutes. That’s about half a Japadog every 43 seconds. The runner up was close, managing to wolf down six.

Inside Vancouver is a multi-author blog, written by Vancouverites about Vancouver. Our goal is to give an insider’s view of Vancouver, to provide information, stories and opinions from the locals’ perspective about this great city.